The way I discovered what (I believe ) works for me. (My appologies for the rambling and span ).
When I first began trading Forex in August 2006 I didn't know where to start. Although as a Yorkshireman I am very cautious about spending money, I did the usual thing of buying systems and training programmes. They looked promising at first, but in the end I couldn't make them work for me.
Maybe I had been lucky, but I don#8217;t believe any of the ones that I tried to be rip-offs - that they just didn#8217;t work for me. The issue was that I spent almost as much money on losing trades since I did at buying the systems. Why was this? #8211; It was since I couldn't take paper or Demo trades badly - it had been simple for me to reside with a 200pip stop loss in Demo, not so when actual money was involved (even at only #1 per pip at a UK Spreadbetting business ).
I had been fortunate to discover T2W, which led me into the forum at which in May 2007 I found James16.
James16 says that you just don #8217;t need to go through hell to find out if you have it in you to be a successful Forex trader. I think that it really depends upon your personality.
I took what James16 said to heart. I joined his Private Forum for 1 month, but couldn't justify the cost of continuing membership at that time. He said not, and you need to demo first trade timeframes until profitable live in daily and weekly. I tried for 6 weeks to become profitable trading daily pin pubs #8211; couldn't afford the big stops for your weekly. This entailed never getting to bed before 01:00 hrs on Sunday. I discovered this very hard, since I needed to get up by 06:00 hrs and found that it took me a fantastic while to turn off after being on the PC looking at Forex. My problem was in not using a means of determining a Profit goal or a Trailing Stop method which backtested consistently. I gave up and began to search for different systems since I did not (and still don't ) trust 4hr charts due to the 4 different begins to the 4hr pub.
#8216;The_Wizard' said he ignored the advice concerning timeframes and discovered he had most success on the 1hr. He then got a commerce record as to get a job as a professional trader. But although tempted, I chased the lure of PA off the 1hr charts.
But it took a very long time before I found anything which backtested OK for me personally. I discovered that indior were in actual fact as optional as James16 Price Action and I couldn't get them to backtest consistently for me.
I found Jacko, whose method works but is optional, so I spent $500 in becomming one of the #8216;turtles#8217;. I discovered that I found myself just carrying his signals and so did not trust my judgement. I am currently only following 6 months when he had his biggest gains since I had been off on Holiday at B/E and I have been in all of his losing transactions.
Then I came across FTI and Skunny:
FTI (who had been a professional trader, then manager of traders for a major bank) said research #8216;The Art of War#8217; and stay flexible in your thinking, but his method was ALL discretion and worse still employed 5min charts without prevent losses #8211; too fast and too dangerous for me personally.
Skunny said the maximum timeframe universal charts would be the 1hr, so thats exactly what you need to (mainly) transaction from. He also said that if you draw a Fib involving the correct S/R levels, and Price breaks (i.e. closes beyond rather than just pierces) the 0% or 100% line then it will last until at least 38.2% past (in 5 pips for spikes and differing broker prices). I discovered that my backtesting worked best over swings, where I couldn't manage the Stop Loss in a live account.
It had been through Skunny that I came across, whose Fibonnacci Trading method (again off 1hr charts) and Trading the Daily method (off daily charts) I have had some success with.
It had been through the Bobkus threads that I discovered about PeterCrowns (another pro trader),from and found the DIBS method. And through Peter Crowns at the #8216;No Free Lunch...#8217; thread which I found Joel Rensink ako #8216;TheRealThing#8217; (a professional trader for over 30yrs) along with his #8216;First Strike#8217; and #8216;One Night Stand#8217; methods. He offers (for free), both the details of these and daily updates on progress at his Website site.
*Update my results are shown in post #10.
I've some methods which suit my personality, my capital and my timezone, and I can boost the returns by incorporating the flexibility of FTI, the Anti-Hedging of Jacko, the Fibs of and Skunny along with the PA of James16.
I genuinely believe that I am getting there!
Ian
P.S.. If you would like to find the details of methods mentioned above appear ForexFactoory the appropriate FF username (I have highlighted in bold) then search for threads started by these (or their articles ) #8211; or to their blog or website.
If you have a question then send me a PM, rather than article in this thread,because I don't look at it much.
Note that I may post anonymised PMs and replies in this thread.